


Cemetery Flowers

by cupsofstardust



Category: Mystic Messenger (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Ambiguous Relationships, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Cemetery, Dead People, Death, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Language of Flowers, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:20:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25706542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cupsofstardust/pseuds/cupsofstardust
Summary: Saeran has a routine: every week, he visits the cemetery with a bouquet of flowers.This is how he meets her.
Relationships: Choi Saeran & Main Character
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	Cemetery Flowers

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for writing mystic messenger fic in 2020 I just like Saeran.

There's someone new in the graveyard. 

He's never seen her before. 

She's standing under the weeping willow at the top of the hill, gray-green vines obscuring most of her slight frame. Her brown hair is pulled up in a ponytail, a few stray wisps brushing her cheeks.

She's wearing white. 

Most people don't wear white to a cemetery. 

He can't tell if she's waiting for someone or for some _thing._ Is she here to visit someone, like he is?

The bench he sits on is cold, even though he's been here for at least an hour now, staring down at the white marble headstone in front of him.

In loving memory of Park Daeun  
Devoted daughter and caring wife  
1987 - 2017

"Did you know her?" 

He flinches, his grip tightening around the flowers in his hand. He glances up to find the girl standing next to him, staring thoughtfully at the tombstone before them.

He turns back to it. "No."

It's quiet. His ears ring.

"Did you?"

Her answer is soft. "No."

They grow silent again, and he fidgets with the worn cuff of his hoodie. The bench creaks next to him when she sits down, uninvited. Saeran bites his lip, hair standing on end, and bounces his leg.

"What's your name?" she asks after a while.

He glances at her, but she isn't looking at him. She's looking at the grave.

"Saeran," he answers finally.

He doesn't ask for hers, and she doesn't offer it. 

Neither of them say anything for a long while, and she drags her foot back and forth, digging a shallow trench in the dirt. 

"You brought flowers." 

She's looking at the bouquet in his fist. He looks at it too, and shrugs.

"Yeah."

"...Why?" 

Saeran is quiet while he thinks about it. He lifts the flowers closer to him and rubs a thumb over their velvety petals. 

"Graves should have flowers on them. Without them..." He gestures to Daeun's grave. "It looks... lonely."

She mulls that over, tilting her head. "So you buy flowers just to put them on some random person's grave?"

He nods, feeling the tips of his ears heat.

If she notices, she doesn't comment on it. "Do you always bring this kind?"

This time, he shakes his head. "Not always. I try to bring different ones," he murmurs, and then he wonders why.

She studies him intently and he fights the urge to squirm under her scrutiny. "Why?"

"You have a lot of questions," Saeran says. When she doesn't respond, he continues, forcing his voice to remain as neutral and steady as possible. "Every flower has a meaning. I pick a sentiment and I... pass it on, I guess."

The back of his neck heats in embarrassment, but she doesn't ridicule him, like he'd expected.

She just points at the ones in his hand and asks, "So what do those mean?"

He studies the petals, mostly so he doesn't have to focus on her as much. "'May you be happy. Goodbye.'"

When he looks back to her, and meets her honey-brown eyes, he's surprised to find her smiling.

"That's nice," she says gently, and a cool breeze tousles their hair.

Saeran nods wordlessly, swallows, and gets up. He can feel her watching him as he sets the flowers down on the grave. Her gaze makes the back of his neck prickle.

"May you be happy, wherever you are."

He leaves the cemetery without saying goodbye.

* * *

When he returns a week later, she's waiting for him.

She's standing under the same tree, her hair tied up in the same ponytail. She watches as he opens the rusty gate, her eyes warm in the late afternoon sun. 

He moves past her into the cemetery, hearing more than seeing her fall into step beside him. He takes a detour past last week’s grave—Daeun, he remembers—and notices the flowers have wilted.

She's the first to speak: "What did you bring today?"

He supposes this is his new routine, then, until she inevitably loses interest in him like people tend to do.

"Asphodel," he says. "And tea roses."

They come to a stop in front of a headstone. The name on it is Kim Yeona. 

She's quiet while he sets the flowers down on the mound of dirt. When he straightens up, she asks, "What's your message this time?"

"'I will remember you as eternally lovely.'"

She turns to the headstone. "Did you know them?"

Saeran shakes his head. "No."

"Do you ever pick someone you do know?"

The corners of Saeran's mouth twist up ruefully, and he doesn't look at her when he replies, "Why would I pick people I don't want to remember?"

She's quiet for a long time, and Saeran thinks he's finally done it: he's scared her off. Took him long enough. But when he glances to the side she's still there, silent in a way that should frighten him, but it doesn’t, with her hands clasped against the skirt of her dress. 

"That makes sense," she says, her soft voice carrying on the breeze. "Perhaps another kind stranger will leave flowers for those you wish to forget."

The wind blows in earnest now, pushing his bleached hair off his forehead and stealing the words from the tip of his tongue. He stares at the frozen ground, his eyes burning with something akin to sadness but for what he doesn't know.

 _Would_ someone leave flowers for her?

...Would _he?_

"Perhaps."

* * *

He stops in front of the gate, a fistful of flowers in his left hand, and he finds himself scanning the cemetery, looking for something. 

He doesn't realize he's looking for her until he doesn't see her. 

And for some reason, his heart sinks a little. 

Regardless, he opens the gate and makes sure it's closed behind him. It's cold outside, but not the kind of cold he likes, the kind of cold with an easy current, an occasional breeze and a bright sun to warm the world up between breaths.

This is the kind of cold that is constant, and permeating. The kind of cold that never truly leaves once it's come. The kind of cold that comes with the end of things.

He thinks if the world were to end, it would end with ice.

His fingers trail along the edges of the tombstones he passes. The chill cuts him to the bone, so he stops.

Frozen grass crunches underfoot as he veers off the packed dirt path and weaves between headstones. He doesn't know where he's going, but the familiarity of it all soothes him in a way most people would find morbid or macabre, that a young man could find any solace among the dead.

It's not like he can find any with the living. At least the dead can't hurt him.

His eyes are trained on the ground, as they usually are during this part. It makes it feel fairer, somehow, to not see the graves before he picks one. 

The cemetery is silent, so when he sees another pair of shoes, he stops dead in his tracks and looks up in surprise.

She's standing in front of a headstone, her eyes downcast. She doesn't acknowledge him any further than a slight shift of her hand. 

"You're here again," he says, slicing through the silence.

Her gaze slides over to him, her lids lowered, and her mouth quirks up in a tiny, momentary smile.

"I am," she replies, "and so are you." Her eyes light on the bouquet in his hands. "What do you have today?"

He looks down at it. "Pink carnations."

Today, she doesn't ask for the meaning, so he doesn't give it. Instead, he turns his attention to the headstone in front of her.

"Do you know them?"

She draws a deep breath, then turns away from it and faces him.

"Where are we headed today?"

His gaze shifts from her face, to the tombstone just behind her, then back, an uncomfortable mixture of unease and uncertainty sketched on his features.

"I don't know yet," he finally says. "I usually pick the one I stop in front of, so... this one, I guess."

She looks behind her, to the grave she was standing at, then moves aside to let him pass.

He eyes her as he crouches to place the flowers on the packed, hard mound of dirt. She won't look up. His gaze drifts to the headstone and he reads the epitaph, instead.

Choi Junghee  
At the end of hardship comes happiness.  
2003 - 2018

Without even realizing, he's reaching out to trace over the characters, as if they might vanish before his eyes.

He looks back at her. She's covering her face with her hands, and through her fingers he can see the shine of tears in her eyes.

That's when he stands up, and backs away, and when she doesn't say anything, he turns and he leaves.

* * *

When he returns, she's waiting at the gate.

He wipes the palm of his free hand against his slacks and clenches it into a fist, so she won't notice how it shakes. 

She smiles at him and, once he's within earshot, says, "You clean up nice."

The suit is his brother's. He doesn't have his own, and it was short notice, and Saeyoung had two. He said he outgrew this one, and Saeran has always been smaller than him. Feebler.

Weaker.

He forces a tight smile and prays she doesn't notice the tension carved into the rigid line of his shoulders. 

"What's the occasion?" she asks when he doesn't make any move to reply. 

"Um," he says, and suddenly he feels faint. 

His knees buckle and he braces for the impact, but she catches him, and holds him afloat. 

"—hear me? Saeran? Hey, you're alright, I've got you." She speaks softly against his head, her mouth close to his ear. "What happened? You're shaking..."

His breaths are too short, too shallow, to allow any words out of his throat, and after a moment she sinks to the ground with him and gathers him up, rocking gently in a way that suggests she has no idea she's even doing it.

One of her hands rubs up and down his spine soothingly, the other woven into his hair, grounding. It occurs to him, very distantly, that she's cold. It must be cold out.

He takes a breath, and he barely feels it, so he takes another, and another, and something hot drips onto his face.

With his next breath comes a sniffle, and he realizes he's crying, and once he's realized it he can’t make himself stop. 

Her arms are around him and he should feel claustrophobic, and, and _caged in,_ but he doesn't. He realizes that she's whispering something, a little bit of nothing about the last thing she remembers eating, and he focuses on it, because it's the only thing that doesn’t hurt.

"Are you with me?" she whispers, and after a long, long moment, he nods into her neck.

After another, he pulls away from her and she helps him stand, and after still a few more, he manages to look her in the eye.

"You don't have to tell me what happened," she says at last.

Saeran shakes his head and swallows thickly, wiping at the tears on his cheeks. "No, I... It's fine, I should—you deserve that much, at least, after—"

"Saeran," she interrupts, and he looks up at her quickly, "I didn't help you in the hopes that you would do something in return. That's not how it works. You shouldn't feel like you need to relive whatever happened for my sake."

She promptly does an about-face and starts off into the cemetery, very much expecting him to follow. 

When she realizes he isn't, she turns back around to face him and says, "Are you coming? I'm sure you didn't bring those flowers for me."

He glances down at the slightly crumpled bouquet of flos adonis and meadow saffron with the vague, fuzzy memory of going to the flower shop nearby, of his brother calling after him.

 _Where is Saeyoung?_ he wonders distantly, as he follows her into the cemetery, the gate swinging shut behind him with a familiar, grounding clang.

He stares at the ground as he walks, the path and the routine comforting in their ritualism, and he finds himself slowing to a stop much further in than he realizes.

The headstone is a small one, time and rain and what he likes to think is the love of frequent visits wearing down the corners and making it look soft. 

He sits on a bench near it, and it feels warm, and he wonders if someone was visiting a few moments ago, if they had just barely missed each other. 

He wonders who it was, and if they would've spoken had they met.

She stands beside him, and doesn't make a move to sit, so he stares down at the flowers in his hand and takes a steadying breath.

He feels her eyes on him.

"It was a trial." 

She doesn't say anything, waiting for him to continue. He can feel her listening.

"There was... well. I was giving my... testimony. Um..."

"Take your time," she murmurs, and he feels tears prick at his eyes.

"She, um... I saw her, I-I looked at her, and I haven't... the last time I saw her I was eighteen, and—"

He hears her shift, and a cold hand touches his back. It takes everything in him not to flinch, and he doesn't even think he manages, because the hand is gone in an instant. "Breathe, Saeran. She's not here, you're safe."

He takes a deep breath and squeezes his eyes shut to fend off the tears threatening to spill over.

"Sorry," he mumbles. "I, um... I'm not used to... talking. About her."

"You don't have to now, if you don't want to."

"I do," he says quickly. "Want to. I just... I don't know how to start."

"That's okay. You have all the time in the world."

He clenches his shaking hands into fists, then drags one through his hair in an effort to calm himself down. 

"She, um." He swallows, hard. "She..." 

God, he feels sick.

He trains his gaze on the flowers in his hands and they're fuzzy and he wonders if they've always been so fuzzy.

"She hurt me," he chokes out, finally, and he can't breathe around the admission. "I think. I don't remember a lot of it, and I don't want to." 

He inhales, sharp, and tries to exhale slowly. 

"That's what Saeyoung and Jihyun say, at least. They were there too, at the..." He clears his throat. "I had to testify against her and she... she looked so..."

She waits, but when he doesn't continue she prompts, "Scary?"

He shakes his head. His hands are trembling again. "She looked small. Small and sad and frail. I think it would've been easier if she _had_ looked scary but she just. Looked normal."

"Sometimes that's even worse," she murmurs. "To know the monster under the bed has a human face."

"Yeah," he agrees, and it grows quiet again.

For a long while, the only sound is the wind rustling in the trees and the distant chirp of the few birds that dare to be out during colder days.

"I'm proud of you," she says, finally, and he looks at her, and she looks back, and her eyes are honey-warm. "Both for telling me and for being brave enough to face her again."

His mouth feels dry, but he musters up a weak smile. "Thanks."

After another moment, he slips off the bench and lays the flowers on the grave, and he kneels there in silence for what feels like hours, until he can hear Saeyoung's voice calling for him.

* * *

The world has started to warm again.

It's been a month or two since he's visited the cemetery, and spring is in full bloom. 

He feels good, he thinks. Or, at least, the best he's felt in the last couple months, all things considered. It's the first time in a while that he's been able to pay a visit to the cemetery, but he falls into his routine as easily as ever.

The back of his neck prickles and he lifts a hand to touch it, then turns around, searching.

She's on top of a grassy hill, looking down at him, her hands clasped against the skirt of her dress. The sun shines down on her, and she's so pale it seems to stream through her.

He lifts a hand in a wave, and continues on his way, knowing she'll follow him regardless. She's been on his mind, ever since his last visit to the cemetery. He's curious about her; she never tells him anything about herself, but she knows so much about him.

He doesn't even know her name.

He stops in front of an older tombstone, and sits on the ground in front of it. The name on it is faint, nearly washed away by time. She comes to a stop beside him, but doesn't sit.

She doesn't ask what he's brought today. "Gardenia and locust," he says anyway, rubbing his thumb over the delicate white petals. 

"They're lovely," she offers, and he hums and it falls silent again. 

Saeran knows what he wants to say, but the words are too sticky on the roof of his mouth and he can't get them out. 

He settles for, "How are you?"

She doesn't answer for a long moment. "I don't know," she says eventually. "What about you?"

He nods, somewhat awkwardly, and clears his throat. "I'm... alright, I think. Better than I was. Worse than I could be."

She smiles at that, and in Saeran's eyes it shines brighter than the sun. "Aren't we all," she remarks, and the sunlight catches on her eyes and turns them liquid, bright amber spilling out onto the ground.

His heart beats a little bit faster, and he looks down at the flowers in his hands and _curses_ himself.

* * *

When he returns a couple weeks later, it's with a flutter in his chest and clammy hands. 

He smooths down the front of his shirt, hoping it's not too wrinkled, and picks a ball of lint off of it. He surveys the bouquet of purple scabiosa and cedar sprig, with a single damask rose in the middle, making sure it's still neat, then puffs out his cheeks with a sigh and pushes the creaky old gate open. 

He takes a different path today, one that leads down towards the edge of the cemetery, furthest from the gate, and veers onto the grass.

He skirts around headstones and burial plots, until a tug in his stomach makes him stop and look up.

She's standing there, in front of a headstone that looks quite new, her eyes wide and unseeing. She looks tired, he realizes, noting the dark circles under her eyes.

She seems out of it, so much so that he hesitates to approach her. But he does anyway, and before he says anything he looks at the gravestone in front of them. 

The name on it is Choi Minjee, and her date of death was three months ago. Saeran does the math; she would've been his age if she were still alive.

"Are you alright?” he asks eventually, and she doesn't look at him. 

She just stares at nothing, her gaze fixed on the headstone but her mind a million miles away, it seems.

Just when Saeran is giving up on receiving an answer, she opens her mouth.

"No,” she says, faintly, no louder than a breath. "I don't think I am.”

He swallows, and his gaze flicks back to the grave. "Did you know her?”

It takes a moment, but she nods wordlessly. Numbly.

"Oh,” he whispers, his heart deflating. "I'm sorry, I... I'm so sorry.”

"Me too.”

He offers her the flowers lamely. "I, um... You can do the honors, this time. If you want, since... well.”

She looks down at them, blankly, and shakes her head and backs away, the beginnings of a sad smile on her face and something knowing in her eyes.

"I'm sorry.”

He hesitates, then turns and puts the flowers on the grave himself. 

When he turns around again, she's gone, and he's left staring at the space she once occupied.

* * *

Saeran returns to the cemetery two weeks later and, though the sun shines as bright as ever, the gate is freezing when he opens it. 

He carries a small bouquet of cyclamens and everlastings, tied off with a piece of ribbon he'd found in a drawer in the kitchen. 

The air is crisp and fresh, invigorating and lonely at the same time. His path is winding; he almost stops several times, but his feet propel him forward, as if in search of something specific. _Someone_ specific, rather. 

He ends up at the top of the hill, overlooking the rest of the cemetery, at the foot of a headstone so worn away by time it might as well be unmarked. 

He knows what it says, though, even if he can barely read her name now. It feels strange, to be here after so long.

There's a bench nearby, an old wooden thing as weathered as the graves around it.

He moves to sit down and that's when he sees it—a bundle of pink and purple sweet peas, tied together with a length of twine. There's nothing beside it, nothing attached. No letter, no owner in sight. 

He picks them up and lifts them to his nose, and a smile spreads over his face, unbidden and sad. Tears prick at his eyes, and he sits there for a long, long time, until the sun has hidden itself behind the horizon and the crickets have started their symphonies.

That's when he finally gets up, and puts the flowers on the grave, and wipes his eyes and smiles despite himself.

He tucks the bundle of sweet peas into his pocket and leaves, the gate clanking shut behind him.

He returns the next week, and the week after, and the week after that, just as he always did, and as he will always do, but he never sees her again.

**Author's Note:**

> "At the end of hardship comes happiness" is the literal translation of a Korean proverb. The English equivalent would be something like "no pain, no gain" but that doesn't sound quite as lovely.
> 
> My friend Aster made this [handy little site.](https://thesanctuary.carrd.co/#) I got all of the flower meanings from there, and I tend to trust them when it comes to flowers :D
> 
> Hope you liked this! Comments and kudos are nice, thank you <3
> 
> [my twitter!](https://twitter.com/yujinchos)


End file.
